BARENERGY—Barriers for energy changes among end consumers and households

The main objective of this project is to develop methods to identify
the relevance and strengths of various barriers for energy
behaviour changes among end consumers and households, and to discuss
how activities from political authorities, energy
producers and NGOs can overcome these barriers. We will address
changes in consumer behaviour along two dimensions.
The first is energy saving and improvement of energy efficiency
within households, the second is changes toward more
sustainable and renewable energy technologies. We are also concerned
about the relationship between these three
strategies; turn down and switch off, the purchase of
energy-efficient appliances, and shift to (more) sustainable
energy
carriers. Based upon the state of art we have identified six
barriers to energy change among end consumers, ranking from
macro to micro perspectives. 1) Physical and structural barriers.
2)Political barriers, 3) Cultural-normative or social barriers,
4)
Economic barriers, 5)Knowledge based barriers and
6)Individual-psychological barriers We will combine an individual
and
institutional approach. This means that individual and household
energy behaviour – and changes in this behaviour – can
only
be understood by considering individual values, attitudes, norms and
knowledge among individuals together with the context
in which this behaviour takes place. We have developed a
methodological triangulation with three main empirical
approaches.

• Qualitative interviews with strategic stakeholders in the
involved countries
• Representative quantitative surveys among
consumers in the countries involved in the project. However, we will
also include Greece in this survey in order to focus on
energy related questions in the climate of SE Europe
• Qualitative strategic focus groups among targeted consumer
groups in the same countries.

With strategic groups we mean people with different windows of
opportunities and people with different social background.